Welcome to the PokéCommunity!

Hi there! Thanks for visiting PokéCommunity. We’re a group of Pokémon fans dedicated to providing the best place on the Internet for discussing ideas and sharing fan-made content. Welcome! We’re glad you’re here.

In order to join our community we need you to create an account with us. Doing so will allow you to make posts, submit and view fan art and fan fiction, download fan-made games, and much more. It’s quick and easy; just click here and follow the instructions.

PGM is all set for February. This month, we're playing through a game known as Eevee's Tile Trial. If you wish to earn rewards, please head over to our event thread by clicking on the provided link and give yourself a shot at the game!

Hey Unregistered! How fast can you game? The Marathon II is up and running in Video Game's - compete against your friends to see how quickly you can complete sixty intense in-game challenges. See you there!

I've been thinking about this for a while now, on and off and I wasn't really intending on publicizing my thoughts but recently I changed my mind and I will expose a bit of my madness to you guys today. Also note that this is a hypothesis driven off my own perceptions of the world and that there isn't much hard coded facts in it, I just want to see what opinions other people have and such. Alright, here goes.

I believe that usually it is the female in a relationship who desires to have a baby more than the man. To the point where I consider the possibility of some sort of inherent genetic thought process that runs through females to have offspring in order for humanity to continue on. In the current day, this world is quite overpopulated and I ponder whether the above occurs less frequently in women now. I haven't looked at any information regarding birth rate trends or anything to that effect.

Also I wonder if the rise in global population could have something to do with the increase of the amount of people who are not born 'straight' as nature's way of trying to bring balance back to this world. Somewhat like how some chemical reactions reach and maintain a dynamic equilibrium such that any change imposed on the reaction will eventually revert back to the equilibrium state. Over time there seems to be an increase in the amount of non 'straight' people born into this world but is this just because back then people were far more afraid of 'coming out' than they are now or is it due to my explanation above or a combination of both? I'm finding it a bit difficult to put it all into words but I'll try summarize my two fold hypothesis now.

Due to the consistent increase in world population over time;

1) Nature (or some sort of unknown force or genetic change in thought process / something) is partially responsible for causing a decrease in annual births per year, thereby lowering the global population and attempt to bring more balance to this world.

2) Nature (or some sort of unknown force or genetic change in thought process / something) is partially responsible for causing an increase in non 'straight' people being born into this world as a means to lower the global population and attempt to bring more balance to this world.

1) could pretty easily be disproved by a graph that shows an increase of annual births over a recent span of time. 2) is harder to disprove I think. I apologize if anyone takes any offense to any part of my hypothesis. It is not my intention to hurt or upset anyone (for once!)

Actually I think this is a very interesting hypothesis - it actually makes a lot of sense. Although I think we will find that the first part is probably disproved. I think that this an interesting point to make in the endless arguments between those who have no issue with homosexuality and those that are (for some reason) opposed to it. Although, either way I find this a very interesting theory.

The only thing I do want to know, is why you have called this "a dark hypothesis".

I see, well that makes sense I suppose - same situation as with Dark Matter and Dark Energy - I always assumed that was a practice confined to physics though. If you find any more information on this subject please share it with us. :D

I think it's an interesting theory, but I don't think it holds any water. In history males wanted heirs just as much as females want babies because it continued the bloodline. We saw this especially in royal families. Homosexual and bisexual individuals have existed since human beings as a species were formed; it's nothing new. Since human beings have become master at manipulating the environment, I do not think nature has much of an impact on births or births of homosexual/bisexual human beings as a way of "restoring balance". Natural disasters may kill humans, but mostly humans kill humans and nature has no need to interfere.

The answer to the first is more economic than biological. With more development you get more urbanization, better access to contraception, but also more education and employment opportunity for women, a higher emphasis on education in an urban requirement that increases parenthood involvement (which would also decrease the number of children born due to parenting becoming more "intensive"), among many other changing values.

I'd argue economics because the demographic transition is highly correlated to development (around 0.8 just looking at some scatterplots), and because the process is coupled to the developmental process with Western Europe going through their transition over the Industrial Revolution and achieving their low birth rates around 50 years ago, and with developing countries achieving drops in birth rate more or less in a way corresponding to their level of development.

It would be interesting if higher rates of non-straight people are triggered due to population pressures. We could go pretty wild with the hypotheses on how this would happen and why it would have a selective rationality, but I don't think we have any idea where to begin.

A counter-argument would be that the gay liberation movement occured during the 60's and 70's, when the birth rate most of the Western World were well on their way south or had pretty much reached today's levels - so the drop in birth rate was well on its way to completion before this apparent increase in non-straight people. This would drop the whole biological argument for me, because once there's an exception to one part of the human species (the West), it's hard to argue that it's general to mankind.

My friend who has had two kids says that for her one day a switch just flipped in her brain and she wanted babies. She says that others she's spoken with had similar experiences. I can't speak of whether there is less desire to have children or not today compared to the past, but I don't think that desire exists in a vacuum.

There are a lot of things, and BlahIsSuck has done a fine job overviewing the major ones, that factor people's decisions to have children. The more agency a woman has the more likely she is to choose when and how she has children. So not only access to contraception, but societal norms that make it okay for women to make those kinds of decisions also play a factor. Bad economic times can also affect the rate. Think of the post-WWII and the simultaneous economic and baby boom. When times are good, people feel safer having kids (and if a particular society listens to women's desires about this kind of thing then you'll see a drop in birthrates).

You also have to keep in mind that gay people can have children if they are in heterosexual relationships. Probably there were a lot of gay people in the past who, for one reason or another, did this because it was just a part of their society and culture. (And I imagine it still happens a lot in certain parts of the world.) I would guess that the ratio of gay people today isn't all that different from any point in history. I mean, after all, there are some notable times and places in the history books that show there were people with homosexual desires and/or relationships. (Google pederasty or Sappho for some examples.) It's just been taboo so it's not been something that gets talked about. I can't prove this, of course not until I perfect my time machine.

tl;dr I think there have always been gay people whether there was an acknowledgement or understanding of the idea, and that birthrates go down when women have more power.

Others have already said the same although, I think it's a stretch to suggest that our natural reaction to over population is to have gay babies. And placing the blame (for lack of a better term) on women for wanting children is more of a generalisation, I know plenty of guys who were the ones to suggest children, my uncle for example. But yes, women are the majority here.

I do see where you're coming from but I think that technology is more responsible. The further we develop our industries the more Earth teeters on the edge of the equilibrium. We may or may not have recently slipped off the edge with our pollutants and such and we'll find out within the next 10,000 years whether nature goes 180° to return to equilibrium eventually.
The same as it has with all those Ice ages throughout pre-history. And if most of the population dies out, sweet, we know what not to do now.

The PokéCommunity

Meta

Pokémon characters and images belong to The Pokémon Company International and Nintendo. This website is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo, Creatures, GAMEFREAK, or The Pokémon Company International. We just love Pokémon.